I remember almost as if it were yesterday. It was late April 2017 – as I am apt to do on any given day, I found myself thumbing through my multiple social media accounts, check checking up on the latest news.
I don’t recall exactly at what time, but suddenly my various feeds were inundated with a slew of posts talking about the disaster that was taking place down in the Bahamas; something called the “Frye” Festival? Yeah, I thought it was a festival sponsored by one of my favorite leather goods brands. My bad.
Of course I was soon corrected – it was the FYRE Festival which, pun intended, was going up in flames. Posts containing real-time photos of cheese sandwiches and disaster relief tents filled my head. What exactly was going on? Who is involved/responsible for this mess? Well in a matter of days, most of my “burning” questions would be answered. In the immediate wake of this story dropping, I am (almost) embarrassed to say that I was filled with a great deal of bemusement. My fascination with the events of the Fyre Festival were punctuated by moments when, while chatting with friends, I would find myself crying with laughter at the poor folks who got duped into paying for a “luxury festival experience” on a (not) private island in The Bahamas.
The Netflix original documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, looks back on those harrowing days as well as the calamitous lead up to the event which reverberated through social media for days.